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PULSE AND EHYTHM. 



By MAEY HALLOCK-GREENEWALT. 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



[Reprinted from The Populab Science Monthly, September, 1903.] 






[Reprinted from The Populab Science Monthly, September, 1903.] 



PULSE AND EHYTHM. 

By MARY HALLOCK-GREENEWALT, 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

nnHE close connection between pulse and rhythm has been specu- 
-■- lated upon since the fourth century before Christ. Herophile, 
Avicenna, Savonarola, Saxon, Fernel and Samuel Hafen-Eefferus have 
successively conjectured that the rhythmic phenomenon of pulse is in 
some way responsible for our sense of 'beat.' The speculation was 
fascinating. It could not become convincing without the help of 
data capable of being furnished only by very recently invented instru- 
ments and by recently accumulated knowledge. 

A sense of rhythm, probably due to instinct, is found well developed 
low down in the animal series.* This fact is significant when one 
considers that the theory usually advanced and accepted is that physical 
activities of a regularly recurrent nature have created this sense in 
man. The beat of the pestle used by primitive man to crush grain, the 
blows of the flail, the rhythm of the quern and the spinning wheel, 
the rock of the cradle, and in short the entire series of industries 
where a regular beat or reciprocal motion suggests alternate action have 
been put forward as the probable origin of the dance, musical and 
verbal rhythm, and at length of the beat of music, f 

Tempting as is this theory which associates the origin of rhythm 
with the development of ordered human activity, a rhythmic sound, 
call or cry is first found coexistent with the first complete circulatory 
system, heart with valves and blood vessels. This first appears in the 
insect family and there too, in the saltatoria of the orthoptera (com- 
monly known as crickets, grasshoppers and locusts) appears this con- 
junction of hearing, ability to call or stridulate, a nervous system and 
valvular heart. The common existence of these phenomena does, not 
prove that the beat of the rudimentary insect heart led to rhythm, but 
it suggests, at least, that this combination has been subjectively fruit- 
ful of recurrent sound as a form of sexual and probably of pleasurable 
activity. 

Mr. S. H. Scudder has put down the songs of these little creatures in 
musical notation,! giving them after careful consideration the attribute 
of rhythm. Unfortunately the circulatory system of the insect world 

* ' Descent of Man,' Darwin, D. Appleton & Co., p. 566. 

f ' Bhythmus und Arbeit,' Karl Bucher, passim. 

$'The Songs of the Grasshoppers,' Am. Nat., Vol. II., p. 113. 



426 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

has scarcely been investigated. As a curiosity, yet as a possible venture, 
a parallelism may be suggested between the stridulations of a cricket, 
which have been counted as occurring at the rate of between two and 
three chirps per second* and the number of pulse waves peculiar to 
very active insects or one hundred and fifty closures of the heart valves 
in one minute, f 

Inspecting in a very cursory manner the higher phylums of the 
animal kingdom, the authority of numerous investigators can be given 
for the perfect rhythmic quality of bird songs. The writer can vouch 
for it that the cackle of one guinea hen during an entire summer went 
with clock-like regularity at the rate of eighty-eight to ninety-two 
cackles per minute. The faster cackling being a laughably accurate 
sign of the growing excitement attendant on the laying of an egg, 
said by the owner to occur at about eleven o 'clock every morning. 

The scientific study of rhythm, so far as man is concerned, has 
been approached almost wholly from the side of its conjunction with 
literature. Looked at from that side, it is not strange that the testi- 
mony could never be mathematically exact and emphatic. The only data 
which are of sufficient accuracy to prove that the rhythmic phenomena 
of pulse first impressed on our consciousness that which can accurately 
be called rhythm, are to be found in the metronomic denotations of 
musical compositions. It is there and there only that the brain has 
been able systematically to externalize the rhythm most natural to it 
with a sense of method and order approximating instrumental exacti- 
tude and capable of an exact expression and measure in number. 
These furnish only a trace, but a trace sufficient when one keeps in 
mind the havoc that conscious intellect can always play with things 
strictly natural. 

While making a bibliographical search for anything treating of this 
musical side of the subject, one suggestive title only was found. It was 
under 'pulse' in the Larousse Encyclopedia and covered the subject to 
a degree alarming to a new and anxious investigator. It read ■ Nouvelle 
methode facile et curieuse pour connaitre le pouls par les notes de la 
musique. ' (New method, easy and curious for gauging the pulse by 
musical notes.) Francois Nicolas Marquet, Nancy, 1747. When 
found, the quaint little book proved lamentably insufficient. In its 
time there was neither metronome nor sphygmograph. 

In the introduction to this little treatise which in its day seems to 
have created quite a stir — ' amateurs in search of novelties bought it for 
fun, and kept it by good taste,' M. Marquet naively tries to disarm 
his critics by saying that he already seemed to hear them object: 'it is 
certainly a very bizarre matter this learning to know the pulse by 
musical notes,' adding, 'one could answer them, it is not more strange 

* Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., October 23, 1867. 

t'A Text -book of Entomology,' Packard, Macmillan, 1898, p. 401. 



PULSE AND RHYTHM. 427 

to paint the pulse with notes than to paint the sound of music with 
those same notes; to paint numbers with figures, and finally to paint 
words with letters. ' In this way the good doctor confounds throughout 
the treatise the idea that music notes and measures could make a very 
good sign-board on which to denote exactly where a morbid pulse 
fails of being normal, and his discovery that a minuet of his time was 
usually placed at the same rhythmic rate per minute as accompanies 
a normal pulse, which pulse, for want of a better chronometer than 
the long hand of a clock, he places at one beat per second. 

This little work, imperfect as it is, and in spite of all its limita- 
tions, renders clear, tangible and visible the failure, already men- 
tioned, made by those who thus far have occupied themselves with the 
question, to give consideration to the statistics furnished by musical 
compositions through their metronomic denotations. Even the ear 
aided by the metronome and the pulse recorded by the sphygmograph 
need to prove the influence of the latter on the former, the unconscious 
record made in musical composition of the recollection by the mind 
from an indefinite number of beats per second of a certain stated num- 
ber, which repeats itself in one form of union after another by different 
composers at different periods and in different lands. 

The material from which statistics can be drawn is so unlimited 
that, for want of space, two examples only will be considered, the 
first dealing with the metronomic markings of the Beethoven Sonatas 
and the second with popular music. 

Out of forty-three metronomic markings, taken straight through 
from the beginning of the first volume of the Beethoven Sonatas — the 
four standard editions as a working basis — nineteen are set to a rhythm 
of seventy-two and seventy-six beats to a minute, a rate exactly that of 
the average normal, healthy, adult human pulse; a pulse given by the 
best authorities as lying betwen seventy and seventy-five pulsations 
in the same time. According to fuller statistics, the physical pulse, 
varied by the time of day and the effect of meals, ranges from a little 
below sixty to a little over ninety. Within this limit all the rhythmic 
markings of these sonatas lie. Three standing at fifty-six and fifty- 
eight beats per minute, contrary to expectation, belonging to fast move- 
ments undoubtedly marked slower on account of the difficulty the 
fingers would experience in performing the notes as fast as the imagi- 
nation would direct. The average of the entire one hundred and forty- 
seven markings given by the four editors, Von Biilow, Steingraber, 
Kohler and Germer, was sixty-four and four tenths rhythmic beats per 
minute. The one sonata marked by Beethoven himself bearing the 
figures 69, 80, 92, 76, 72 for the different movements, Allegro, Vivace, 
Adagio, Largo, Allegro risoluto. 



428 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



If with the eye fixed on the second-hand of a watch or a clock the 
long meter doxology be sung, every one of the equally accented notes 
entering simultaneously with the tick of each consecutive second, it will 
become at once apparent that the melody is delivered at a rhythmic 
rate of sixty beats to the minute. Should one in the same breath hum 
Yankee-doodle, sounding each of its accented notes, at the same rate, 
it will be found that these two melodies, standing at the extremes of 
the sublime and the ridiculous, the one in character slow, the other fast, 
the first combining the utmost dignity and breadth, the second ludi- 
crously vapid and thoughtless, are both set to precisely the same length 
of rhythmic time by the clock. In the same manner the adagios, 
allegros, prestos of the great master's sonatas unfold to pretty much 
the same span of a passing moment. In his sonata 'Les Adieux,' op. 
81, the adagio or slow movement and the allegro or fast movement are 
both set to one rhythmic unit to the second. The impression of slow- 
ness or rapidity in the music is due rather to the character of the con- 
text and the number of notes to be played in the divisions within the 
minute than to the actual clock time it takes to perform the rhythmic 
unit. 

Seventeen letters were addressed to as many band-masters asking 
them for the 'beat' iisually used in their conducting. The answers 
invariably brought 'from 64 to 72 rhythmic beats per minute,' that 
being probably the time to which countless soldiers had found it most 
convenient and agreeable to march. Those wishing to investigate on 
their own account will find it interesting to clutch at their pulse, 
whenever a whistling street boy passes, and even a jangling hotel piano 
might in the same connection -have sometimes a 'reason for being.' 
More often than accident warrants, it will be found that these also 
' with nature 's heart in tune ' were ' concerting harmonies. ' 

Metronomic Markings per Rhythm of the Different Movements of 
Twelve Beethoven Sonatas. 













c4 


oi 












1— 1 


CO 






















d 


6 


CO 


o4 


CO 


6 


6 


CO 


t^ 


GO 


OS 


§ 






1—1 


oq 


OJ 


i>^ 


r-T 


Hi 


W 


t- 


t~ 




of 


of 


t» 


CO 


w 


OJ 


CO 


03 


m 


w 


m 


in 






p 


P 


P 






P 




P 


P 


p 


P« 


d. 


p< 


Ph 


P- 


d, 


p-i 


P* 


Ph 


Ph 


Ph 


Ph 


o 


O 


O 


o 


O 


o 


O 


o 


O 


o 


O 


o 


<£ 


of 


cf 


cf 


cf 


cf 


cf 


if 


£ 


cf 


cf 


cf 


-*j 


-u 




-l-J 


-t-> 


-IJ 


+J 


-IJ 


-t3 




H-> 


+J 


<s 


oi 


a 


c3 


c3 


ci 


ci 


ei 


d 


ei 




a 


P 


P 


fl 


p 


S 


P 


P 


£ 


c 


p 


J* 


c 


o 


o 


o 


o 


o 


o 


o 


O 


o 


o 


O 


o 


xn 


W 


xn 


xn 


xn 


xn 


xn 


xn 


xn 


xn 


xn 


xn 


56 


76 


66 


72 


76 


60 


56 


76 


76 


72 


72 


69 


80 


56 


72 


58 


80 


76 


92 


66 


58 


63 


56 


80 


72 


76 


60 


63 


72 


76 


80 


76 


66 


69 


72 


92 


56 


58 


52 


76 


60 








80 






76 
72 



PULSE AND RHYTHM. 429 

The foregoing examples, although following the pulse in their ex- 
actness, are still for scientific purposes not quite what may be desired. 
The heart's action varies. So do musical tempi. Both are disturbed 
by the slightest exciting or nervous influences. Still the track, though 
faint at time, sometimes quite effaced by conscious effort, is there; 
corroborated through a hundred different channels. One distinguished 
psychologist* finds that a subject could repeat simple intervals with- 
out accent with greatest exactness when these intervals lay between 
0.4 and 0.7 seconds. It takes but a simple problem in arithmetic to 
see that this agrees with from 75 to 86 rhythmic beats per minute, or 
the region of pulsation common to the human pulse. Another \ on 
conducting a series of experiments on rhythm, 'the first and most 
important object of which was to determine what the mind did with a 
series of simple auditory impressions in which there was absolutely 
no change of intensity, pitch, quality or tone interval,' finds that the 
pulse seemed at times to impose a grouping in which the clicks coming 
nearest to the time of the heart beats were accented. 

To Professor Bolton^ must be given the credit of having success- 
fully found the means by which rhythm can be permanently differ- 
entiated from time in music. He says this general principle, arrived 
at by the same experiments, may be stated: "The conception of a 
rhythm demands a perfectly regular sequence of impressions within 
the limits of one second and one hundredth of a second. When a 
longer interval was introduced into the series, the impressions coming 
between the long intervals fell together into a group but they did not 
form an organic unity. There was no pleasure in such a rhythm. 
Something seemed to be looked for in this longer interval which was 
wanting. ' ' Why ? 

No matter how slowly one sound follows another, time, as under- 
stood in music, can still be a characteristic of the sequence. A clock 
may strike this minute and not again for an hour, but time is still 
being measured. A rhythm, however, can be said to exist only when 
sounds succeed each other so as to fall within the same limited horizon 
of attention. This differentiation has not to this day been clearly 
made by authors of musical encyclopedias and dictionaries, they having 
been satisfied with considering rhythm as simply similar in music to 
meter in verse. 

Bearing these statements in mind, it seems improbable that the 
mere physical activities and industries of primitive peoples, such as 
cradle-rocking, spinning and grinding should have been so constantly 
of one rhythm as to impress accidentally a beat of such uniform 
variation, extending within fifteen pulsations difference a minute 

* ' The Psychology of Rhythm,' Am. Joum. of Psychol., January, 1902. 
f American Journ. Psychol., Vol. VI., No. 2. 
% Ibid. 



430 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 

(from 60 to 85) on nearly all musical compositions, nor must it be 
forgotten, as has been said before, that it is these compositions which 
furnish the only means by which the human brain could, thanks to the 
metronome, so accurately and sub-consciously give record to the rhythm 
most natural to it. This rhythm for physical as well as psychological 
reasons must, it is submitted, in all probability have been suggested, 
coordinated and regulated by the phenomenon of pulse. The first and 
patent objection to this theory will be that we have no conscious cog- 
nizance of the arterial beat within us. The objection is however fully 
met by the well-known law that, 'one unvarying action on the senses 
fails to give any perception whatever.' For familiar examples, we 
have no conscious sensory impressions from the whirling of the earth, 
the weight of the air or the weight of our bodies. Yet, inevitably, 
the recurrent arterial beat, must have left its record and impress on 
the unconscious and subliminal brain, guiding and determining the 
conscious and audible expressions. Nor is it without its supporting 
proof that where the insect's heart beat is 150 to the minute, the 
insect's chirp runs to the same speed; and where the human heart beat 
is 60 to 90 to the minute, human musical rhythm runs within the same 
limits. 

Mr. Fiske says, in his 'Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy,' not only 
must all motions be rhythmical, but 'every rhythm, great or small, 
must end in some redistribution, be it general or local, of matter and 
motion.' It is not probable that a dainty rhythmic wave of color ex- 
ternal in character would make its impression on the brain, and the 
latter in turn remain unaffected by a — relatively speaking — thumping 
cataract of a pulse impulse. Some disturbance of the brain tissue must 
occur from this vibration, reaching in course the very portion allotted 
to music. The basilar artery, the brain's basic artery, feeds the 
chorda tympani by a direct channel, whereas the rest of the cranial 
tract is fed by ramifications of its ramifications. The stronger surging 
is therefore directed against the auditory tract. It may be urged that 
in that case the brain would know but one rhythm. It might be so 
were it not that 'the whole cerebral and central nervous organism 
seems a happy adjustment of fixity of habit not too fixed, and suscepti- 
bility not too susceptible.'* 

"Perception of time duration is always a process and never a state 
— for us to perceive five seconds, something must durate five seconds, 
for us to perceive a year some definite sensation would have to durate 
a year."f 

On these principles, imagining a composer seated quietly at his 
desk in the act of composition, is it not feasible to suppose that sub- 

* Herbert Nichols, Journ. of Psychol., Vol. VI., p. 60. 
t Ibid. 






PULSE AND RHYTHM. 431 

consciously to himself, and for want of a more intimately sympathetic 
conductor, a physical metronome was within him deflecting his rhythm 
to its standard? Contrary to the other arts, music has its birth and 
being entirely from within the human brain, and from within has 
been impressed a beat of far more rapid rate than the ictus of the re- 
current industries already cited on its musical products. The sug- 
gestions all this calls forth are of course unlimited. To one we may 
give our fancy free rein. Mr. James Huneker in his exhaustive sum- 
ming up of Chopin's music states that master's favorite metronome 
sign to be <88 to the minute. As 'people with considerable sensibility 
of mind and disposition have generally a quicker pulse than those 
with such mental qualifications as resolution and steadiness of temper, ' 
could one consider that the ailing Chopin's pulse helped his rhythmic 
tendency to 88, while the resolute steady Beethoven's was normal? 

The arm of knowledge is long; it needs no yardstick with which to 
measure the stars. Can it feel the pulse of those who have long since 
crossed the boundaries that separate this world from the next? 



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